A visit
by planet p
Summary: Debbie’s best friend joins her on a visit to her father’s house. WARNING: Scary!Broots, see Author’s Notes for further details.


**A visit** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

**Author's Notes** WARNING: Forced sexual situations; M.

This actually freaked me out – and I wrote it – so it's okay if it freaks you out too!

I actually like Broots, so I don't know why I wrote him like this in this fic?

*sighs*

* * *

She wore her dark hair short, falling limply to a blunt edge. He had found no discernable piercing, not even her ears, no tattoos. Yet, there was something about the way she made his daughter smile that he didn't like, didn't trust. That and her clothes – gothic, was it? She was tanned. It was real, and he quite imagined she had been born with it. Big round eyes, and brown. He wasn't sure if the eyeliner accentuated that, made them appear bigger. She was older than his daughter, four years. He couldn't fathom it really, how their friendship had come about, with her so much older. He knew, however, that she had introduced his daughter to romance novels. Naturally, he'd been worried about the day they would sit down, father and daughter, and discuss that… it… the birds and the bees. He needn't have worried, that woman had already seen to it. She had no right, she'd had no right, no right at all. But that hadn't stopped her. And this music his daughter listened to now! Rock orchestra, his daughter had called it, because how could he understand something like that, he was too old.

There was nothing to like about this woman, and seeing her, meeting her, had not changed that fact. His daughter was 20, she was 24, and if he could help it, they would never spend another day together.

He hardly recognized his baby anymore. She had the same voice, underneath all of that rubbish she wore she looked more or less the same, but more often than not conversation was just another word for argument.

Her name was Chim, Debbie told him, and Chim laughed, almost lurching forward, and smiling, nodded, offered her hand to shake, all of the things that he imagined contained within that book about adults and expectations of manners.

Broots took her hand and shook it, but if she thought that she had won herself a day pass to fuck his daughter's life up, that wasn't happening, because he might have smiled, but it was false approval. He had thought that he would be nervous, but there was no nervousness at all, not the slightest hint, only determination.

He was going to make it right.

xoxo

They ate a phone-ordered dinner, and in between Debbie explained that Chim was a nurse like her, or well, at least what she was currently studying to be. Chim worked at McDonald's now though, wanted to take a little time off nursing. Broots made a mental note to cross-reference that with all of the hospitals and clinics in town until he found the one she had worked at and found out what really had happened. Dismissed, he imagined. She was a liar too. He added that to his list.

He didn't like the way she smiled, if someone might catch her eye, or laughed. A try-hard, he thought, or that could just have been the drugs.

He would find what he needed, he decided, and then perhaps he might have a chat with Parker. Parker cared very much about his daughter, he knew.

Debbie looked across at her father. She had been doing that a lot this last minute.

"Computers?" Chim said, smiling, and grinned.

Broots nodded. "I work with computers, yeah," he confirmed, blandly.

"Sounds exciting!"

Broots looked her full in the eye. "Monotonous," he said.

Chim laughed. "Of course."

"Your accent?" he said after some moments.

Debbie grinned as though she thought it somehow funny that her father had taken so long to note this.

"Canadian," Chim supplied. "I was born in Canada."

Broots nodded, it was an acknowledgement, no more. He didn't believe this. It wasn't like other accents. A TV accent, he thought. It wasn't much of an accent at all really, not American, not Canadian. A TV accent. You could listen to it, recognize it, but it never hurt your ears, not unless that was its intention.

xoxo

Chim slept in the spare room. He knew that it would come to this, Debbie would want her friend to sleepover with her, so a week ago the spare room that hadn't been a spare room suddenly became a spare room. He would not have that woman in the same room as his baby girl, in her bedroom.

He had known from the offset that there would be no sleep for him tonight. He was going to have to remain alert. He wasn't going to have drugs in his house, and he didn't trust Chim not to take a look around at his possessions, price them up. _"Computers? Sounds exciting!"_ What was that, codeword for loaded?

xoxo

It was 2am in the morning. He was awake, of course. He made his way cautiously along the passage and when he stepped into the bathroom he saw Chim and the pills in her hand, but as soon as he saw her hand he almost reeled back at the sight of the bruising on her wrist.

No! He was not having his baby girl exposed to nasty bedroom games or violent boyfriends. He really couldn't care less which beyond that this woman had gotten his daughter mixed up in that and he intended to put a stop to it. And that stop was going to be right now.

He charged across the room and took a hold of the woman's wrist.

Chim looked at him, scared, but even she saw that that tack was well and truly worn and that she would have to try something else.

She smacked into the wall, Broots still holding her wrist, and all of her little pills bounced and rolled across the floor.

"My daughter," he said, keeping his voice low, but in no way friendly, and staring into her face, "is not involved in this!"

Chim watched him watching her.

"Do you understand?" he shot.

"Let go of my wrist. It hurts," Chim told him, her voice plain.

"Do you understand?" he asked again, and did not release her wrist.

"I understand," she said.

Broots grinned. He didn't think she did! He allowed her wrist out of his grasp and pushed her back against the wall. "What is this?" he demanded. "Drugs!"

"All above board, officer," Chim ground, imitating an American accent flawlessly, so flawlessly that he thought that it was no longer an imitation.

Broots snatched up the bottle. Valium, the label read, prescribed to a Chim Petrelli. Broots glared. He laughed shortly and emptied out the bottle into the basin. With a twist and the sound of water rushing the pills ran away down into the piping and out of sight. "You can go. Get out!" he growled.

Chim peeled herself from the wall. She didn't cry, didn't even show any signs of it.

He watched her with a horrible expression as she walked out of the bathroom to gather her few things from the spare room. Then he thought better, and took after her into the passage. He wasn't giving her the chance to try anything.

xoxo

He smiled, realizing why she had likely worn long sleeves that came up over her wrist. She was some piece of work. She had managed to completely rope his daughter in without even a suspicion, but now he knew the truth.

It wasn't a difficult task, to collect up her few things. He watched her from the door. She was by no means slim, but it all looked alright on her, he realized. She must have been a charm with the guys. She was bent over the bed, unmoving.

He stepped into the room suspiciously and walked to her back. One, two, three, he fingered the pieces of her spine.

When she didn't react, he pulled her around to face him. She looked right into his eyes. He glared. She sat back down on the bed suddenly and pushed her legs apart.

He almost laughed, or hit her. He couldn't believe it. She must have been stupider than he thought.

She touched his leg, fingered her hands around to the backs of his thighs and pulled him against the mattress.

He grabbed her hands roughly, crushing her wrists, digging into the bruises there. A slight look of discomfort came onto her face, no more.

She stared into his face as though trying to see something, as though not quite seeing him.

He dropped her hands, and with his hands on her shoulders, threw her back onto the bed. She fell back and lay there without protest. This had happened before. She enjoyed it.

He touched a bare thigh. "Get up!" he said.

She sat.

He gripped her shoulder and upper arm and pulled her into a standing position. "Get undressed and lie on your stomach!"

He watched as she removed the Felix the cat tee that showed off all of her curves and the pair of briefs that might have been more suited to a child.

She looked up into his face. As though for instruction, he thought, and that made him sick. He took her arms roughly and turned her around and threw her down on the bed on her stomach.

xoxo

He held a hand over her mouth to stop her from waking Debbie. It was nothing she wasn't used to. He didn't want to look at her. He held her down so that she wouldn't try to turn around. He was giving her what she wanted. Hopefully she would fuck off after that, make up a believable story so that Debbie wouldn't be upset that she had left in the middle of the night. They would talk about the rest later.

xoxo

She was numb. She was numb then and she was still numb as he watched her out of the house.

He shut the door, and in the darkness, the door against his back, he knew that it wasn't going to be as easy as all that getting rid of her.

* * *

Debbie walked into the kitchen as though unfamiliar in her own house. She looked up when she saw her father and explained that Chim had left last night and that she had been feeling sick and had wanted to go home so Debbie had let her out.

Broots accepted this, but he didn't miss Debbie's cell phone and when she popped out to the bathroom he checked her messages and noted that Chim had sent her a message telling her that she had felt sick and had wanted to go home, just as Debbie had said, and that she hadn't wanted to wake her and she hoped that was okay, and could she please explain this to her father.

Broots drove his daughter to the campus where she studied and dropped into McDonald's in search of evidence that Chim did indeed work there. And there she was, uniform and all, serving coffee.

He ordered a coffee and did not wait for her to finish, walked to a table and sat down. When she brought it out to him, he said, "We need to talk," never looking away from what he had been looking at.

He couldn't be sure of Chim's response, but he sat with his coffee and thought over his options.

xoxo

Cox came in some 10 minutes later and ordered a coffee and asked Chim how she was, to which she replied her standard response no doubt, she was fantastic.

Broots listened but did not turn. So the woman had Center ties. He cursed himself silently for not seeing it first off.

Cox took a table and waited for his coffee to cool with a frown.

Five minutes later he walked to the counter again and ordered an almond croissant from the glass display.

Chim worked McCafé, where one could order a real coffee or a piece of cake, that sort of thing.

Cox took a number and walked back to his table, indicating that she should bring his order out to him.

Broots watched her walk to the table with the croissant and plate, and didn't miss when Cox touched her arm but did not take it.

"Can we talk?" he asked. Chim made to reply, but he added. "Not now. Later." He looked at her now.

"Of course," she said.

He nodded once. "Thank you," he said. "For bringing that out."

Chim smiled. "It's my job."

He frowned and watched her back to her counter.

xoxo

Broots spent the morning whipping up a program that alerted him when Cox checked out. The program beeped twice at 2pm.

Cox chose a café at the Rada Complex as their meeting place. It was a 24 hour shopping complex, plaza sort of thing. Chim ordered a coffee and didn't speak for some time. Cox didn't interrupt.

Broots watched from a corner where he sat with a book.

"You're okay?" Cox said when the silence became too long.

Chim looked up. She nodded.

Cox frowned. He took his hand from his mug of coffee and crossed his arms.

"It's nothing new," Chim finally said.

"You can't sleep?"

She shook her head a fraction.

"Do you drink?"

"No."

"Pills?"

"Valium."

Cox nodded. "Okay." He sighed. "I want you to be okay."

Chim didn't meet his gaze.

"Hey. I do."

"I believe you."

He peered across the small table at her. "Chim?"

She made no movement of her lips to answer.

"You're not okay."

"Stop it!" Chim shot. "I'm alive!"

Cox closed his eyes momentarily in thought or frustration. "It's like they say. About vampires."

Chim dropped her eyes to the table. Broots thought that she wanted to cry, but not in front of this man.

"Let me help you." He reached out a hand.

Chim pulled away, standing abruptly. "No… It's mine!" She stormed out of the café, pausing only for a moment, before she left.

"Shit!"

* * *

"What was that?" Broots demanded, steering her into the passage that indicated the toilets and into a room for disabled persons.

She turned her face away from him.

"Huh?" he said, gripping her face.

"Stop it," she said, her voice not quite convincing in the pleading department.

"What was that?" he yelled.

She didn't blink. "Nothing," she said.

He pushed her shoulder into the wall. "Nothing!" he yelled, smacking a hand against the wall beside her. He focused his eyes on her own eyes, and raised a hand to slap her. Did nothing phase her?

He didn't slap her. Instead he was thrown across the room and into the wall opposite. Chim ran.

* * *

Broots sat at his computer, researching vampires. It was the only lead he had.

xoxo

McDonald's opened at six. Broots was there at 15 to. He walked swiftly across the near deserted car park when he spotted Chim step out of one of the cars, her car, and took a wrist. "Vampires?"

Chim stood, back pressed against her car, stuck in between the car and Broots. "Where did you hear that?" she said. "You must have heard wrong."

Broots grinned. Of course he had heard wrong! Why hadn't he thought of that first?

"I want you to stop following me," Chim told him firmly.

She stepped aside but he caught her and spun her around and smacked her up against the car, a hand in her hair. "Do you want me?" he breathed into the side of her face.

She didn't move.

He slipped a hand around her waist. He changed his mind and wrenched the car door open and forced her inside. "We can do it here. You don't mind."

xoxo

Chim sat in the toilets, crying to herself.

* * *

_Any sort of feedback at all would be welcomed – it's even okay if you flame me!_

_I know there aren't many Broots-stories out there, but I'm sure that doesn't mean everyone hates him, it just means they like (or can write) another character better. To be honest, I wouldn't have a clue about all of that techno-talk!_

_Maybe the reason I stopped writing this was because it was so freaky-scary-boo (though there was something after this, though it sucked very much)?_


End file.
